Tag: Afrin

Nineteen years ago, on 15th February 1999, an international conspiracy culminated in the revolutionary thought-leader and feminist Abdullah Ocalan being imprisoned in a Turkish jail, in which he still resides -if he is still alive.

Reading Ocalan’s words today contributes to my increasing realisation that, by the standards of mainstream modern civilisation, I too am a ‘radical’. I don’t necessarily like the connotations of this word, and how it might falsely separate me from some of my not-so-radical friends. Because, in the sense that I just want to live a free and balanced life, in respect of all human beings and the ecology of the planet, ‘radical’ is only normal and natural. Moreover, on these terms there is a radical inside all of us, waiting for the moment to have the courage to speak up. Surely it is in our uncorrupted Nature to wish to achieve balance in all things? Surely the global civilisation-mesh that we now live in is the most imbalanced in history?

This was supposed to be a personal diary extract, taking the pressure off from discussing wider concerns and complex social issues. But of course, I am inseparable from what is going on in the world.

One of my so-called ‘radical’ responses to the world I live in is to practice celibacy. After a few months of practice, this seems to be bearing fruit. Sometimes, there are moments where I feel I am denying myself. I may even experience physical pain as a result of this. But in other moments I feel less denied and more contained and focused. My creativity then bursts forth in writing, theatre and song.

I also contemplate how my celibacy is linked to my feminism. Wanting to be a better person, to improve my self, my male / genderwild gender and its relation to other genders, particularly women. In the past, I admit I have been a trawler of images of women, not specifically pornographic but led by porn, so that everywhere I looked, I would see women as more or less stylised images; not as themselves.

I would like to say I am free of all that but I’m not. I may be free from pornography but I am not free from the pornographication and sexualisation of culture which is everywhere around us in modern society. We categorically do not live in sexually liberated times. I know what sexual liberation is, in my body, heart and mind. I have found the beginnings of it in practice, in the communes I have visited. I am sex positive, and if society was truly liberated, I might not be celibate. Modern consumerist society, however, mistakes sexual proliferation for sexual liberation. It’s not the same.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I dedicated my love to the women of Afrin, who are right now defending the most radical women’s movement in history, in Afrin, northern Syria, against a horrific Turkish invasion. Please help me support them.

The boy Sunshine and the girl Pain had travelled across Europe and down into the African continent, to meet with the dream-teller of the river Zaire.

The dream-teller’s hut was guarded by two gorillas, and fruit bats hung from the roof inside. Sunshine was too bright to be scared, and Pain was too strong.

When the children were sat in the hut with the dream-teller, the dream-teller asked, ‘Why have you come to this place; this place where all human stories began, and where all will end?’

‘I had a dream about Remembering’ said Pain.

‘And you want to know what it means’ replied the dream-teller…’So tell me of this dream’.

‘Well,’ began Pain, ‘I dreamt that people all over the world were starting to Remember; to Remember that women and wild animals and plants are all equal to men; and also that men are equal to plants and wild animals and women. I dreamt that my friend Sunshine, who you see before you now, went up into the sky and replaced the Sun. He shone down with a pure love -not like the old Sun, but he was lonely there.’

After listening to Pain’s dream, the dream-teller was quiet for some time. She chewed on some leaves which she had in a bowl next to her, and spat on the ground. Every now and again she threw some berries, from another bowl, up into the air, where the fruit bats would catch them in their jaws. Finally, she spoke:

‘Your dream is of the Great Remembering and it is not only a dream. It is something that is beginning to happen right now. You, Pain, and you, Sunshine, are the prophets of the Remembering. But you must understand that no time and no place is ever perfect. The Great Remembering is truly not of a past perfect time, it is of all within us that is good, from all times. The Great Remembering is when all the stories ever told will be interwoven into one grand story…a story so great and so special that all will be happy to be characters in the story, because all beings will live healthily ever after in equality.’

‘I love you, dream-teller, and I love you, Pain, but what shall we do now?’ asked Sunshine.

‘Now you must remember what it is to be a girl, Sunshine, and although you are a girl, Pain, you must remember what it is to be a boy. For really, the soul of girls is in boys too, and the soul of boys is in girls too.’

‘Pain, I Remember you are cool and refreshing, stiller than a rock, dark and able to run in the dark’ said Sunshine.

‘Sunshine, I Remember you are warm and loving, harder than a rock, light and able to fly to great heights’ said Pain.

Then the dream-teller stood up with tears in her eyes.

She said, ‘Now you must go in the world to where the Remembering is strongest, and inspire the children there. Because where the Remembering is strongest, is also where the Forgetting, the old ways of pain and violence, are very strong too. The Forgetting must not be victorious in its war against the Remembering!’

‘But where is this place of war to which we must travel?’ asked Sunshine.

‘Its name is Afrin, in the land of Rojava -land of Remembrance. In the region that some call The East of Middle. There you will be protected from the guns and bombs of the Forgetting, by my spell of peacefire. You will walk amongst the children in the villages. You will make even stronger the story of Remembering that is happening there.’

Pain kept quiet, for she saw even further than the dream-teller. She saw that the quest of herself and Sunshine would not end in Afrin. It would not end until the Remembering had spread across the region of the East of Middle; until all boys and all girls had Remembered, and could not become Forgetful, hate-filled adults. This is the where the real story begins…

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My name is Matthew, author of !Epic Tomorrows. Click here to help me rebel against the evil Hydrocarbon Twins, Corporate Ogres, the Devil of Neoliberal Economics Himself, and the Same Old Story into which they are written…